Italian FA President: No Foreign Owners

Can This Man Own Milan?

For Milan fans, the news was bad enough that they had been trounced by rival Inter while being watched by their owner and Ital­ian Prime Min­is­ter Sil­vio Berlus­coni.  How­ever, a rumor cir­cu­lat­ing that Berlus­coni has been in nego­ti­a­tions to sell the club to Libyan leader Muam­mar al-Gadaffi adds to the con­fu­sion about whether the team is a seri­ous threat to the scud­etto and Cham­pi­ons League.

While it may seem unfath­omable to some that Gaddafi could own the club, the rumors and the con­nec­tions between the two prompted the Pres­i­dent of the Ital­ian Foot­ball Asso­ci­a­tion (FIGC) Gian­carlo Abete to speak last Fri­day on the sub­ject of for­eign own­er­ship of Ital­ian clubs.  Abete praised the Ital­ian fam­i­lies that owned clubs and expressed his oppo­si­tion to for­eign­ers own­ing Ital­ian teams.

Cur­rently, no Serie A club is owned by a non-Italian; how­ever last month Amer­i­can busi­ness­man Tim Bar­ton began the process of pur­chas­ing Serie A new­comer Bari.  Even though he is cur­rently await­ing approval for his bid, the Gilletti have already been very active in the recently closed trans­fer mar­ket in antic­i­pa­tion of a new source of funds.

For­eign own­er­ship is noth­ing new to fans of the Eng­lish Pre­mier League: pow­ers Man­ches­ter United (Amer­i­can Mal­colm Glad­well), Liv­er­pool (Amer­i­cans Hicks and Gillett), and Chelsea (Russ­ian Roman Abramovich) are all foreign-owned.  The for­eign own­ers have kept the clubs prof­itable and expanded their global out­reach even if they have failed to win over the con­fi­dence of all their Eng­lish fans.

Mr. Abete is right­fully con­cerned that one of his own­ers could sell a club to a “ques­tion­able” own­er­ship group or one that could bring scan­dal to Ital­ian foot­ball.  How­ever, the ben­e­fit of expand­ing poten­tial own­ers to for­eign­ers can ben­e­fit the game in the long run.  Hav­ing, for exam­ple, an Amer­i­can owner like Bar­ton will allow him to put his company’s assets into keep­ing the club com­pet­i­tive, as well as expand­ing their fan base inter­na­tion­ally.  Imag­ine Bari kits being sold in Amer­i­can sport­ing goods stores, the form­ing of Amer­i­can fan bases, and adver­tis­ing in places like Dal­las.  For­eign own­ers can allow Serie A to con­tinue its quest to level itself with the Pre­mier League by engag­ing peo­ple from the owner’s coun­try in the team.

Tagged as: AC Milan, AS Bari